That may be a theoretical scenario because it is possible. But in a project like Lykke (and some others as well) it's never just about the code. It's about everything.


Just for example, if we focus on expertise you can take a look at the team here: https://lykke.com/leadership.php

If you do some research about the team it becomes even more interesting. There are tons of infos about Richard Olson, about his financial data-treasury, his data-science and Oanda of course, he is called "Innovator" in some german articles I've read and so on.

Or Sergey Ivliev for example:

Lykke cofounder Sergey Ivliev is Named Best Risk Manager in Russia and CIS
https://lykke.com/city/blog/2016-06-13/lykke_cofounder_sergey_ivliev_named_best_risk_manager_in_russia_and_cis

Btw, a very interesting interview of him about Lykke - a good summary to get an overview:

MR. IVLIEV, LYKKE: “THOSE WHO WANT TO WIN SHOULD BE GRABBING THE OPPORTUNITIES BLOCKCHAIN OFFERS”
https://worldcore.eu/blog/mr-ivliev-lykke-want-win-grabbing-opportunities-blockchain-offers/



But also all the other names. In fact that was the first aspect that really impressed me: The Core-team behind this project.


And regarding the risk of copying code: Another project could try that, but that wouldn't mean much if they don't have the expertise to run something like that. And there are even more points, like connections and so on. Under the line I don't believe that will be a risk. Or, maybe more precise: It could be a risk if they wouldn't move forward. If they would all go on holiday for some months - yep, in that case the risk would maybe increase. ;-)


But one look on their roadmap - no holidays any time soon:

 
 Margin trading (Q4 2016)
 Regulated retail FX (Q4 2016)
 Offchain settlement scalable to 100’000+ transactions per second (Q4 2016)
 Ethereum support: multisig wallets, interblockchain atomic swaps (Q1 2017)
 Payment system provider (Q2 2017)
 Regulated institutional FX (Q3 2017)
 Fixed income products, commodities (Q3 2017)
 1 billion USD average daily volume (Q4 2017)

Yes. It also was asked in their channel and Sergey Ivliev replied:

"In the range of 0.025-0.05 CHF"

This is also something that can give an impression about the potential of this project:







And just btw:

Would be good if this Account would get more followers and retweets: https://twitter.com/LykkeCity

I had the same questions and others as well and like already stated in my previous post I had contact to Richard Olsen. He allowed me to quote him in this thread. I'll quote the most important parts of his mail. You'll find the answer to your question in the last lines:



Richard Olsen - CEO of Lykke:


"The wholle Bitcoin Movement is inspired by the vision to replace human decision making with software algorithms. Algorithms are better, because the cannot be manipulated.

Nick Szabo gave an excellent talk at our Zurich event, where he explained his long-term vision of mapping the subtelty of the legal system that has evolved over thousands of years into software code. Nick highlighted the diffuculty of this task - a good legal system is highly refined and we cannot easily create software code that has all the subtelty of our legal system. The short comings were clearly visible in the DAO event.

I am approaching the issue in the following way:

Lykke follows a really big vision - I want to disrupt financial markets and create a fair playing field accessible for everyone. This is much more than just a matching engine with a user interface and an interface to blockchain - we talk about creating legal entities around the world, complex financial engineering, building a brand, hiring people, all the pushbacks from incumbents that want to make our lives difficult...a long list.

We have to kick off big projects that are essential for the project to fly - I will highlight just two projects: we need to build a open access publication platform for news stories in different channels...a transparent financial market only works in context of independent high quality reporting. Today, the news industry is highly monopolized and starved from independent reporting - I plan to create an open access publication platform, where prizes are available for the best contribution of the past hour, past 6 hours, past 24 hours, past 1 week, past month, past quarter, past year - the prize cascades have a dual function - they reward the author and his editor...it is easy to win an hour prize...more difficult to win a whole cascade. The prizes are good ranking tool of the quality of reports and incentivize the contributors. We plan to create many different news channels. I want to build a truly independent news reporting platform with Economist-like channels, a long list.... To evaluate companies and other assets with all the financial instruments - in depth reporting is essential.

Another big project is a bigdata information system - we live in the world of 'digital data', but there is no global informaiton system with real time forecasts for all the digital data that is being collected. In weather forecasting this is standard - big data models collect the meteorological data and then generate detailed weather forecasts around the world. The same has to happen with all the digital data that society is collecting. I dream of a Wikipedia for big data - the real time information system then feeds the risk management system, which are then used to price financial instruments, etc. Today, there does not exist a big data information system - central bankers continue to rely on ad hoc collected data, excel spread sheets, etc.

Sorry to say - it is just crazy how the financial world today functions. I want to clean up the mess and introduce highest quality standards at all levels. I have a very clear vision of how I can make all this happen...it is an exciting journey, but much more complex than a simple software code that tells us, if this happens, then do this....we are in a hugely multi-dimensional space.

Any investor, who buys Lykke coins runs a big risk - he depends on the judgement of the Lykke team, its core investors, my own capabilities...to increase the likelihood of success I am building Lykke to be extremely fragile - all our software is open source, if people are not happy with what we are doing, they can just copy the code and start a competing company that does better work. There are not sharholder agreements that prevent people from selling...this is good, because anyone can sell when he wants, i.e. voting with his feet...this sends an immediate signal to everyone and forces Lykke to regroup...

In building Lykke I am inspired by biology - I try to implement subtle mechanisms that bring Lykke back into its dynamic equilibrium.

There is another question: strictly speaking the Lykke coins are an entitlement to Lykke shares - they are a digital representation of Lykke shares. To become a full shareholder, the owner has to reveal his name to Lykke - this is a legal requirement from Swiss law. It is more efficient to just deal with colored coins, because then we can take advantage of the full digital efficiency. We will pay dividends, etc. to Lykke coin holders."

With Bitcoin it's not needed to give further infos. Like a usual wallet/exchange.

I had the same questions like some others and that's why I contacted the team and even had a conversation on phone with Richard Olsen, the CEO of Lykke. He is a very kind man and explained many aspects of this projects. And it's indeed different but also very fascinating and a great chance in my opinion.

I would like to give something like an overview how I understand it right now:

The vision behind

Maybe it can be described as "decentralize everything". In other blockchain-projects that is often a headline as well, but with focus on the technical side - Blockchain. In Lykke it's also meant regarding the persons who contribute. Of course, there is a core team of professionals with expertise in many different areas, which can be seen here:

https://lykke.com/leadership.php

...and who takes a look at the fundamentals (technical development, also business-side) will find out that they've already delivered a lot what is just a promise in other projects.

Regarding public relations it's different to other projects. But the goal is to get more and more people involved who understand Lykke as project more as a dynamic movement. While other projects have a marketing strategy, Lykke starts to go step by step into the public with people who are not necessarily marketing-professionals but Contributors who understand the vision behind and explain it in their own way and autonomous.

Richard Olsen told me, that he would like to see a dynamic which will show what Lykke is about step by step and over time without pressure and without dominant leadership regarding it's external representation. He is aware that this can't happen with "one hit", but convinced that it will happen over time - a dynamic process, maybe even faster than one may assume.

I personally already recognized some hints on that approach because I found this very fascinating speech of him when I started to do some research about Lykke:

The power of the small world phenomenon | Richard Olsen | TEDxZurich
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKzjwV_N68I




Financial Side - ICO - Investor perspective

I personally was surprised to see a project like this with fundamentals like Lykke already has it doing an ICO, but without much PR and marketing. The reason is: Lykke wants to build a base, also on Investor side, but they are not focused on selling the ICO now. It's more a way to make first steps into the public and getting more people involved.

I've also asked him if Lykke will issue new LKK for other funding rounds and the answer is yes. Lykke will act as company and the way they do this is usual for companies. Future money they'll raise will increase the value of Lykke so it's not necessarily the case that the price would go down because of that. And since previous Investors are in line with the vision of Lykke it also has not to be much of a concern that there will be "profit-dumping".

With other words, of course this is a risk but it's also a chance, because who does some deeper research will recognize that they are ahead regarding the fundamentals and that is very well thought out and as far as I can say: They have an already working (semi-) decentralized exchange. The tech is already building trust if more and more people will use it.


And I personally believe that's the key-point. While I believed, priority would be selling the ICO the real priority seems to be more to get people involved and to use what they already offer and will offer in future and that will be a lot. Richard Olsen was very open about many things that will come and I would be even allowed to write about it. But, to be honest: That were too much information in too little time, so I'm not able to write it down in a proper way. But...


- It was about the technical side and obviously they are moving fast on that front
- The same regarding business-side

(He also told me some things about economic principles but I'm not even close to understand it. A little bit as if Einstein would explain me physics.)  


In general the public side can be seen as a translation of principles Crypto is about. Of course, Lykke is a very professional company but with a clear focus on fairness and building up trust over time. And like they didn't rush out the tech they are not in hurry to do a marketing campaign to build an Image of Lykke out of nothing in a short time. It will be more like bringing proof out of itself. And my personal opinion is that I have no doubt that the people behind this can be trusted. With other words: Typical concerns everybody in Crypto has, whenever it's about the question "to buy or not to buy" into a new project may play a role for this ICO but I would be surprised if that will be the case for long.


Who has the question: Buying into this or not? My advice is doing research and downloading their App and try it out: https://lykke.com/lykkewallet/

I personally believe that what they are building will be a key-point and like already said: It seems that they are far ahead when it comes to building a decentralized asset-exchange. And since it's already high quality I have not that much doubt that it will find an increasing number of users.

Factoids are not just CFC-tokens. Factoids are needed to pay those who run the federated servers - needed to run decentralized system.

But yes, Investors can't "do" much with Factoids and we won't earn them. But because of the conversion to Entry Credits, whenever EC's are bought, Factoids will be consumed/burned/destroyed, and that will give them intrinsic value. And that is the interesting part for Investors, because we can speculate on the success of Factom and on the possibility that more and more Entry Credits will be bought if there will be increasing use of the system.

Potential Investors/Speculators have to answer the question if they believe in that possibility or not. And I personally believe it's a great bet, because Factom shows since many months that they do a good job on all fronts. Some complain that M2 is still not released but it also can be seen as a positive that they are very accurate. And it's obvious that they are good on the business-front and that gives additional trust regarding their ability to build the system, because companies and institutions wouldn't take Factom serious if that wouldn't be the case.

If you've bought into the ICO you have the private Keys for your ANS. Once they start the mainnet (October or early November if that's still the status) they'll also have a wallet in place and you'll be able to import the priv. keys and instantly have access.

I was pretty critical, but I have to admit, I'm more and more convinced the more I learn about it:


Lykke - decentralized marketplace for all kinds of assets built on the Bitcoin blockchain.



What is so interesting about it?

1. They've already delivered, which is very unusual in the Crypto-Space in my opinion. ;-)

It's a very well working system. Usually I don't like Smartphone-Apps but I would recommend everyone to try out this one:


https://lykke.com/lykkewallet/#1


It's very well thought-out and user-friendly. Best is: Fee is 0% and it seems it will stay there.

**********************


2. The team: https://lykke.com/leadership.php

The CEO of Lykke is Richard Olsen, co-founder of Oanda which can be seen more as just an indication for expertise. The more I read about Lykke the more I believe it could become even bigger than Oanda because the plan is obviously to combine the best out of both worlds and they seem to know how to do it.  

And what I really like is his vision in general. I found a very interesting speech of him:


The power of the small world phenomenon | Richard Olsen | TEDxZurich
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKzjwV_N68I


But also the rest of the team is very interesting. Just for example:

Lykke cofounder Sergey Ivliev is Named Best Risk Manager in Russia and CIS

And, everybody knows this man: Bitcoin Legend Nick Szabo Joins Lykke Advisory Board
 


**********************

3. The Roadmap:
  

• Margin trading (Q4 2016)
• Regulated retail FX (Q4 2016)
• Offchain settlement scalable to 100’000+ transactions per second (Q4 2016)
• Ethereum support: multisig wallets, interblockchain atomic swaps (Q1 2017)
• Payment system provider (Q2 2017)
• Regulated institutional FX (Q3 2017)
• Fixed income products, commodities (Q3 2017)
• 1 billion USD average daily volume (Q4 2017)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1402110.msg16274789#msg16274789


**********************



And a little hint: Because they currently do an ICO with the option to get the money back, it's possible to trade Bitcoin against LKK while LKK is at a fixed price - at least for the next 20 days. With the current Bitcoin-market-situation it may not make much sense and I personally burned my fingers with that a little bit, because I expected Bitcoin to rise and it dropped, but it's a great way to try out their App. Thing is: Nobody needs to buy into the ICO to use it as wallet and even better: As a decentralized exchange. It's rare to find something that is useful for those who just want that and for potential Investors - everybody has to make his own decision.

**********************


ICO and market-situation:



For those who think about buying into the ICO: LKK is not really just a coin, it's a share (100 LKK = 1 share) of the company. The valuation is already pretty high, about $66 M, because they had funding rounds prior to the ICO. It seems as if they go step by step into the public.

I'm not so sure that LKK will hold it's value after the market takes over. But at the same time it might be possible that it even could shoot up, because they already have delivered what other projects like Waves and Heat just have promised until now.


But: The market situation in short-term might be pretty much unpredictable, but especially if it should go down in value after the market takes over it's a buy in my opinion. I'm not sure yet if I will buy into the ICO or hope that I'll get it cheaper right after, but because LKK will be traded on their own exchange the market situation will be different. It's unlikely that those who funded the project in it's very early days will just dump it. 

And what is also interesting about it: For me it seems as if they still don't hype it while they surely would be able to do that. Nothing indicates a lack of funding to do big marketing or a lack of ability to do so. My first impression was that it's late to buy in but that could be wrong, depending on their marketing-strategy for the next weeks and months and possible media-echo and they already got some, but interesting is:

It wasn't much focused on Crypto which might be a reason why Lykke doesn't get much attention yet from us crypto-folks:

Richard Olsen of OANDA fame on his new startup Lykke – LeapRate Interview
https://www.leaprate.com/2015/09/richard-olsen-of-oanda-fame-on-his-new-startup-lykke-leaprate-interview/

OANDA’s Richard Olsen Launches Lykke Wallet for iOS Devices
http://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/exchange/oandas-richard-olsen-launches-lykke-wallet-for-ios-devices/

Swiss Startup Lykke Seeks To Disrupt The Retail Trading Market With Blockchain Tech
http://fintechnews.ch/blockchain_bitcoin/swiss-startup-lykke-seeks-disrupt-retail-trading-market-blockchain-tech/2060/



**********************

My personal conclusion: LKK is something to keep an eye on, and Lykke as decentralized exchange is definitely something that is useful which becomes clear   trying out their App.

I know that they have a whitepaper now, but it was published early August, some days before the ICO ended, which was started at July 11.

And they really didn't like my questions. One of both even tried to spread lies about me. So, maybe I see the project a little personal now. ;-) I'll keep on watching it to see if my first impression will turn out to be wrong. 

Ah, yes, Thanks! I always mix those both projects up. But I wouldn't even say "only" regarding Heat, because they've started their ICO even without a whitepaper, their launch is delayed and I've seen nothing interesting they already could show. I wouldn't buy it at $200k. Same is true for Waves. I've seen the interview of the guy who handles it (with the guys of Bitcoin-Uncensored) and that really left a bad impression.

The only ICO I bought into was Antshares, which is also about decentralized Asset-Trading and it's valued at about $15 M and also in it's very first steps but with good connections in China (launch will most likely be end of October or early November).

Lykke in comparison is ahead regarding it's fundamentals and most likely also regarding connections into the business world.

One thing I think about is, how Lykke should be seen and evaluated in general - for now and longterm. There might be the possibility that this project is so different in many aspects that thinking in common Crypto-rules and "ICO-rules" and expectations might lead to wrong conclusions.

If we imagine Lykke would be an usual project and be traded on Poloniex since march - it may very well be that the price would have increased x5 or even more and be at a $65 M - marketcap now. And like I've already said: It's normal that earlier Investors got a better price but also took a higher risk while a project is in it's first steps. Factom and a lot of other projects increased in price over the last months because of steady improved fundamentals and progress in general and of course: Increasing attention because of that. Some months ago Factom was not even recognized much.  

And Lykke obviously already has the fundamentals. I mean, the App is very well thought out and the exchange is obviously already working. It's not just a promise anymore while nobody knows if it will ever be delivered.



What I'm unsure about are not the fundamentals which are great in my eyes. The market-situation might be hard to predict and not follow the Crypto rules. But: There is something that I find really fascinating: LKK-shares will be traded exactly on that exchange they represent ownership for. Psychologically that could turn out as psychological barrier to sell. Of course I can't be sure about that, but early Investors already have demonstrated confidence in the project. So it's unlikely that they all will turn into greedy dumpers before the real show has begun at all. Additionally they would have to dump shares of Lykke --> on Lykke. That's something I really like. ;-)


With other words: It may be possible that this project already plays and will continue to play by other rules than we know in Crypto. Obviously they don't only target us but they start here - in Crypto. If this will turn out to be successful it's possible that it's not late to buy in but still early and even that it might be not so expensive how it seems. If we compare it to Heat for example, which had a $20 M ICO if I recall it correctly (I never believed in it and still don't believe it's a good project). But: Where would the price be if there already would be a working and well thought-out decentralized exchange? Maybe even above $100 M. Lykke already has that and will be valued at about $65 M after this ICO.

A key question will be if they'll get attention and users. But that's also an interesting aspect because attention generally increases over time if there is quality and ongoing progress. I've seen that in Factom. Without much marketing at all (at least not really for the Factoid-market and Crypto-folks) attention increased out of itself and that's a continuing dynamic. Lykke is different to Factom regarding purpose and target. But similar might be, that they follow a longterm strategy instead of trying to hype rushed out releases.

At least worth to keep an eye on.

It was already safe but this can be seen as additional confirmation:


Exodus Wallet Roadmap – what we know about upcoming assets and features


(...)

Upcoming Support Confirmed

Monero : next (great dev relationship)
Factom: great dev relationship, waiting for milestone 2 (instant send)


(...)

http://woobull.com/exodus-wallet-roadmap-a-list-of-upcoming-asset-support/

Okay, thanks!

I believe it would be best just to disclose those informations. I mean, it's understandable that early Investors had the opportunity to buy cheaper. They were willing to take a bigger risk - so, nothing wrong about that.

But the impression that it seems to be important to keep it secret how much LKK were sold prior to this ICO, could do more damage than help to make this ICO a success. For me personally it's the number one reason to be carefully in general, whenever I have the impression there could be something to hide - while I actually think that this is a good project. I have no doubt that it's legit and not comparable to some other hyped up and basically corrupt projects like theDAO for example (which wasn't just a fail because it was hacked) - and a lot of other ICO's.

But of course: A question for every Investor, who doesn't want to buy blind, is how the price will be after an ICO and if something is overvalued or not. It's also about attention and market-reactions etc. And of course, Lykke will be different in many ways. It won't be a Poloniex-Coin and the market won't play by the usual crypto-rules. But some things never change: If there are many with a lot of LKK in a high profit zone, it could very well be that they will bring some pressure on the price, especially if Bitcoin should go up. That's also something to consider in Crypto for those who pay with Bitcoin and not FIAT. And this ICO is a "Crypto-ICO". And it's not a cheap one.

Ok, thanks for the infos. The slide-share gives a good overview - but also underlines my concerns:





1,590,000 CHF were raised until the current ICO

If this ICO should end successfully it will be 3,090,000 CHF.

The total value will be at 64,284,500 CHF after this ICO and I believe that's a discrepancy.


And it seems to be kind of "top-secret" how many LKK were sold prior to this ICO for the 1,590,000 CHF but most likely the price was about 5 times cheaper than it is now or something like that.


Would it be possible to make public what the price was for the "visionary supports" from august 2016?

I mean, it seems as if there was an explosion of the total value of Lykke up to 64,284,500 CHF in just one month. And that's kind of hard to understand.

I believe/hope that the testnet will go live earlier, but he said that it will run for some weeks. And since we know that Factom tests extensive your conclusion about M2 in December could turn out to be right.

Sorry, that I have so many questions and I don't want to sound over-critical, but what I also don't understand is this:



But in the link that you gave me:

The shares are registered on blockchain. In total 1,285,690,000 Lykke coins were issued. Each registered share of Lykke Corp corresponds to 100 Lykke coins.
https://lykke.com/Lykke_Corp_Placement_Memorandum.pdf

And on the Coin-holders-list it's also:

Total   1,285,690,000 Lykke

https://www.coinprism.info/asset/AXkedGbAH1XGDpAypVzA5eyjegX4FaCnvM/owners


That's a difference of 35,690,000 LKK = 1,784,500 CHF

That difference is higher than this ICO. Kind of hard to understand.

Ok, thanks! I will do that.

I already believe it's a good project and I have read a lot about it.

And I did not ask about "shareholder data and confidential data".

I just asked how many LKK were sold prior to this ICO.

And of course Investors and potential Investors are interested in prices and also about future scenarios. Nobody buys into an ICO to find out that the price goes down right after. And I don't want to say it will. But without knowing how much was sold and at what prices, prior to this ICO, it's a little bit like buying blind.

But why not? I mean, that are not unimportant informations if one wants to come to a decision if to invest or not. And I'm already invested and thinking about investing more. But tbh, I don't understand why it's a problem just to make the number of already sold LKK public and in best case in combination with the price. Because reading about this project it all looks very good. I'm just unsure about earlier prices which were much cheaper and the pretty high valuation of 64 million Swiss Francs after this ICO. Out of Investor-perspective it's the question if I buy now or if I'll get it cheaper after the ICO because early Investors sell millions of LKK because they are with hundreds of % in the profit-zone.


I can't figure it out reading this...